Paris (AFP)
New thunderclap in the soap opera TV rights to French football: Amazon broke into Ligue 1 on Friday by obtaining 80% of the matches, a rebound criticized by Canal +, which announced "to withdraw", suggesting a new legal battle.
According to the distribution adopted Friday by the Board of Directors of the Professional Football League (LFP) and consulted by AFP, the American distribution giant must pay EUR 250 million per season for the period 2021-2024 to recover the eight matches of each day previously held by the failing broadcaster Mediapro.
And this irruption immediately made people cringe at Canal +: the encrypted channel, holder of two posters acquired in 2018 for 332 million EUR each season, estimated its prize overvalued and for its part wanted a new redistribution of prizes and matches in connection with its ally beIN Sports.
According to a source familiar with the matter, the decision was greeted with "surprise" and as "complete madness" on the side of beIN and the encrypted channel, which issued a press release entitled: "Canal + withdraws from Ligue 1".
"After the failure of the choice of Mediapro in 2018, Canal + regrets the decision of the Professional Football League (LFP) to retain Amazon's proposal today to the detriment of that of its historical partners Canal + and beIN Sports", may -on read.
The LFP, which validated this choice "unanimously by the Board of Directors minus one abstention", issued a press release to welcome the arrival of Amazon and to reaffirm that the lot held by Canal + "remains operated by the Canal + Group ".
- Final break?
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It will be necessary to see what legal leeway the encrypted channel has to break the contract linked to the lot awarded in 2018: Canal +, ousted from the initial call for tenders by Mediapro, had entered into a sub-license agreement in 2019 with beIN to buy back its lot of two matches at cost price (332 M EUR).
The Qatari channel, which was in contention on Friday for 80% of Ligue 1 matches and 100% of Ligue 2 matches, must for its part be content according to the distribution recorded on Friday of the two matches per day of L2 that it was already broadcasting ( 30 M EUR), the remainder going to Amazon for 9 M EUR (plus payment of production costs, estimated at 25 M EUR).
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The Free operator must keep the batch of extracts "quasi-direct" for EUR 42 million.
In total, according to this scenario, professional clubs will share half less than what they thought they would receive (EUR 1.2 billion) at the time of the choice of Mediapro, a failed broadcaster whose foray into France turned into a fiasco.
It remains to be seen whether the rupture will be definitively consummated with Canal +, which has engaged in a legal standoff for several weeks with the LFP to contest the terms of reallocation of Mediapro lots: while the League favored a partial reallocation, Canal + wanted a discount overall flat.
The Paris Commercial Court ruled in favor of the LFP in March, but Canal + immediately announced that it was appealing.
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In a procedure launched in parallel, the Competition Authority for its part rejected Friday morning an appeal from Canal +, which accused the LFP of "abuse of a dominant position".
"We will see if we are seized again by an economic player against this decision" to choose Amazon, commented Friday evening on FranceInfo the president of the Competition Authority Isabelle De Silva.
"At this stage it is not yet the case. We will perhaps give each other time to explain how the League has allocated these rights and what is its plan with Amazon."
In the meantime, it is a thunderous entry into the landscape of French football for the American group, which has been invited in recent years to the sports rights market via its Prime Video platform, acquiring for example certain TV rights to football in England. , in Germany and Italy, or even tennis matches at Roland-Garros for the French market.
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The strategy of the online distribution giant is mainly aimed at promoting subscriptions to its Prime platform, a service that brings together music, films, series, documentaries and currently costs 49 euros per year or 5.99 euros per month.
French football, very shaken by the Covid-19 pandemic, was in a hurry to decide quickly on the TV rights file while Ligue 1 had still not found a broadcaster within two months of the resumption of the season 2021-2022 early August.
In addition, the clubs must present a coherent budget on June 14 in front of the DNCG, financial policeman of French football.
But what certainties can they have if Canal + chooses to go into battle again, delaying the epilogue of this interminable soap opera?
© 2021 AFP